make designs that will attract and write copy that will convince the public, but he must first please the whim and prejudices of the man who foots the bill. His whole work, the turning of a phrase, the drawing of a design-everything to the slightest detail-must be passed upon by a man, or a set of men, whose opinions may or may not be worth a pinch of snuff.

The doctor concerns himself only about a cure, and listens to his patient only for psychological effect; the lawyer interests himself only in winning the suit, and promptly sends the too-interfering client about his business; the preacher is supposed to point the way to salvation without regard to the per

sonal ideas of even the richest pew-holder; but the poor advertising man must not only perform the functions of his high office, but must do it in a manner that half a dozen men, more or less interested in the proposition, approve.

The weak advertising man strives to please his client and lets results take care of themselves; the stubborn advertising man fights for what he thinks is best and throws up his job if he does not get his way; the clever advertising man makes the advertiser think he has his own way about it all, and still produces advertising literature that meets his own approval exactly.

That's cleverness-but it doesn't tend to make advertising a "profession."

DITOR AGRICULTURAL

ADVERTISING.

Dear Sir:-In your list of questions you say, "What advertisements outside of those of things used on the farm appeal most forcibly to you?" My dear Mr. Man, don't you know that in this day and age of the world you would be excluding pretty nearly everything that is advertised, for the farmer buys and uses just about everything that anybody else does? Just to test this matter, I picked up one of the popular magazines and looked through it carefully, and, with the possible exception of whisky, Egyptian cigarettes, steam launches, and Mexican plantation stock, I could not find a thing that was not in demand among the best class of farmers. It seems to me that if you bar discussion of advertisements of "things used on the farm" you bar the whole list, so I will disregard instructions on that point.

As to what appeals to me most forcibly, it just depends on what I happen to be hankering for at that particular time. Awhile back it was a gasoline engine, and every paper I picked up I would stop wherever I saw a picture of a gasoline engine or anything that looked like

one.

And right here I want to make the point that the good ad is the one that shows a clear and attractive picture of the article advertised. I very rarely notice an ad that is in solid type, but if

it has a good picture of something I am interested in, even a small picture, I stop and pay attention to the talk. The picture should be a clear, clean-cut one, either an honest-looking drawing, or a well engraved photo. The photo is naturally the best if clear enough, but so many of them are so flat and dull looking that the drawing by an expert advertising artist is often the best.

Good examples of the right kind of ads for farmers are the "Woodpecker" gasoline engine ad and the Peerless Fence Co. ads. Each shows a clean, clear picture of the article advertised, gives a short, concise talk on its merits, and invites the farmer to write for further particulars; and you can bet your last dollar that if he is at all interested in engines or fences he will write, too. Why, while I was figuring on getting a new engine I could no more get past an ad like that than an old toper could get past a saloon. I just had to stop. But I would pass by a dozen ads in solid type or with a bum picture.

What have I bought that I saw advertised? Well, I have bought a little of everything. A gasoline engine, and then later a sparker for it that I saw advertised. I came very near buying a Kalamazoo range. I bought an organ, and a Dearborn desk. I bought a Chatham fanning mill and a Bowsher feed grinder. I sent to Chicago Housewrecking Co. for some hardware and to Montgomery Ward & Co. for some dry goods and

groceries. I sent a couple of calfskins to the Bayer Tanning Co. and had one made into a rug for the Madame and the other into a cloak for the littlest girl. I bought some gasoline lamps, and came very near buying an acetylene gas plant. A half dozen or so of the latest books, two magazines, a fountain pen, a set of collar buttons, an incubator, some new seed corn, a meat chopper, some rubber heels for my Sunday shoes, and some for the Madame's every-day shoes. A phonograph, a pair of President suspenders, and a Globe-Wernecke book case. The Madame has done some buying on her own account that she would have to report. Some of the things I don't know what they are, or what they are for; but I suppose she does.

Now, you may think I am an extreme case, but I promise you that it is only a fair sample of the mail order buying of an average prosperous farmer in the corn belt. I could pick out a half dozen neighbors whose purchases would compare favorably with mine.

The fact is that the farmer is getting to be a mighty good proposition and there is mighty little but what he does buy. It used to be counted that any old thing was good enough for the farmer, just so it was cheap enough; but that day has passed and the man who has something extra good to sell should offer it to the farmer through the farm paper before some other manufacturer with more foresight gets in first and gets the trade.

While the farmer or his wife or daughter is a heavy buyer of the popular magazines, the farm paper is his trade paper and the one he values most highly. When he wants to buy something he naturally turns to it for ideas and advice. If he sees an article advertised week after week in his favorite farm paper, where he knows no swindlers are allowed, he is ready to take hold at once in full confidence. For instance, when I wanted to buy a small fanning

mill I thought of the Chatham first thing, for I had seen its picture week after week in my farm paper and I knew it must be all right or it couldn't stay there.

Right here I wish to emphasize the value of the cumulative effect of advertising. The farmer, like every one else, is largely a creature of habit, and if he sees a thing repeated often enough he begins to take it for granted. He may see your ad for a dozen times and pay no attention to it, until he some day happens to want that very thing, then he goes and hunts up the last paper to find the exact address and sends in his inquiry or order. If Mr. Advertiser has meanwhile become discouraged and dropped out he misses getting the benefit of his advertising, for the farmer will conclude that he has failed in business, or been barred out of the paper, or for some other reason is no good-and some other man gets that order. The article that is advertised persistently and intelligently is sure to win out with the farmer. He is off by himself where you have a chance to get next to him with your ad. The city man is dazzled by the department store displays, and the man in the small town can run into the village emporium for what he wants, but the country man has to make some effort to get what he wants and it is easier to make out an order to some good advertiser, whose argument he has read as he sits by the fire of an evening, than it is to go to town for it. It is my firm belief that there is no man who takes advertising so seriously, believes in it so implicitly, and patronizes it so generously, as the average intelligent farmer. My observations are confined to the native American farmer of the corn belt, but I have reason to believe that the same conditions hold good practically all over the country. The average farmer is a closer reader, is more intelligent, and more broad minded than any other class of workers. And as a rule he has more

loose change to spend. Furthermore he is open to conviction, and that is a valuable point. The town man is suspicious of everybody. If he sees a good ad that makes what seems to be a well-meant and generous offer, he is certain there must be a "nigger in the woodpile somewhere" and he is slow to take hold. On the other hand, the farmer, from experience and general make-up, is inclined to take people and ads at face value, and if an advertiser makes an intelligent and clean-looking effort to meet him half way he is ready at once to meet him on a friendly footing. I speak from experience for I have been on both sides of the fence. Besides being myself a farmer and a buyer of advertised articles, I advertise and sell seed corn to farmers, and I have made a close study of the advertising question from both sides. I have often talked with my neighbors on this line, and the universal idea is that such and such an article must be all right, because "I have seen their ad in the Homestead (or some other favorite paper) for a long time, and, yes, there it is this week again, and I see they offer to refund the money if the thing is not all right. I'm going to send for one of them one of these days."

What should be excluded? Well, whisky for one thing. Farmers have troubles enough without thrusting whisky on them. And fake mining and plantation and oil stock. And practically all of the medical ads.

You may say that no reputable paper will publish the above list of ads, but I know of several farm papers that are reeking with that kind of stuff, and they have a pretty fair patronage from the respectable advertisers, too. For my part I would not care to be found in such company. The intelligent farmer with boys and girls growing up will generally take that view of it and will quietly drop that paper, or, if it keeps coming, will watch for it and burn it. That is the simplest way of fumigating such

papers. I always look over the mail myself, and there are two or three wellknown farm papers that land in the stove without being unwrapped.

What should be added? Well, to tell the truth, there is scarcely any line of legitimate business that could not be profitably advertised direct to the farmer. In glancing through a magazine just now I noticed several good ads that ought to be winners with the farmers. The correspondence school people are not near doing their duty by the farm boy. and he would be their very best subject. Why are they not advertised in the farm papers? And the good shoes? The farmer likes good shoes as well as any one, but the ads are confined wholly to the magazines. Why don't the Iver Johnson people offer their safety revolvers to the farmers? Every farm boy at some time or other has a desire to "Pack a revolver," and a safe one would be better for him than the other kind. The phonograph, too. No one enjoys them any more, or buys them more freely, than the people in the country, but I cannot remember now of ever seeing one advertised in the farm papers. I could fill a page with such instances.

The summing up of the whole matter is that the farmer will buy almost anything that any one else will, if he sees it properly placed before him. There is nothing too good for the farmer nowadays. And, furthermore, his neighbors will all know the result of his buying. If he is suited he tells them all about it, and gives them the address. If he is bit, that advertiser gets a lot of free advertising, too.

He expects the advertiser to keep faith with him and treat him in a straightforward business manner. The great advertising successes of the next ten years will be among the advertisers who appeal directly to the farmers through their trade papers, and treat them intelligently, broad mindedly, and, above all, honestly. HENRY FIELD.

VERY article, crude or manufactured, every service, every bond or stock certificate, every thing sold (where charity, gambling, friendship, or fraud does not enter in) is sold because of one basic principle, namely: The purchaser wants it. In seeming direct opposition to the above statement is the well-known saying that "any man can sell what the purchaser wants, but it takes a salesman to sell what the purchaser does not want."

The difference in these two statements is only in seeming.

No salesman can possibly make a man buy anything the purchaser does not want, unless he does it at the point of a gun.

What the salesman does (if he is a salesman) is to make his prospective want the product which he has for sale.

The two statements are thus immediately brought into harmony. The purchaser buys only when he wants the product. The salesman makes him want it.

It is not enough, however, that the salesman should create the want for his product; he must create that want at a price.

Right there is the rock on which the careers of eighty per cent of the salesmen of this country go to pieces-and by salesmen is meant, not only the individual employed salesman on a salary, but the house or firm he represents, which is really a composite salesman. If the house will not break the price, the salesman can not.

It should be understood clearly that this is treating only of goods sold to resell for gain. There is a great difference between the principles of selling to the consumer, or user, of the goods,

who purchases to gratify a desire or fill a need, and of selling to the dealer, or other third party, who buys to resell for a profit.

Recognizing the truth that the only way to make a dealer buy a product is to make him want it, what then is the determining factor in making him want

it?

The answer of course is the profit he can make in reselling it. But the profit he makes is not dependent upon the price at which he purchases.

Read that again. It is the key to the manufacturer's problem of "too close margins."

No Dealer Will Buy Any Article Until He Is Convinced.

First-That he can sell all he buys. Second-That he can get a price that will pay him a legitimate profit.

To secure the first requisite, he must either have or create a demand for the product and to be assured of his profit, must create that demand (want) at a price. He must (to repeat our previous argument) exert salesmanship. It is therefore clear that his profits depend, not nearly so much upon the price that he pays, as upon the price that he gets and the volume that he sells. As these depend on the salesmanship he puts forth, it is also clear that he is much more interested in anything that will help him in his selling efforts, than he is in the amount of his original investment, his cost.

Now, if the dealer is left to do all the selling work himself, create his own demand, fix and secure his own price, he is entirely independent of the manufacturer and is certain to purchase where he can get the lowest cost.

If, however, the manufacturer helps